156 The Landscape Gardening Book 



it, is as complete an example of bad taste and inappropriateness 

 as I believe it would be possible to find. Yet this sort of thing 

 is not tmcommon — with perhaps some monstrous unusable and 

 immovable chairs, made of the same raw forest product, standing 

 grimly at either side. 



"Rustic work" is only suitable to the most primitive sur- 

 roundings. It is as out of place on a smooth-shaven lawn as a 

 shooting- jacket would be at a formal dinner. Such a bmlding 

 belongs in the woods, if it belongs anywhere — I am not sure that 

 it does belong anywhere— and its roof should be of split boughs 

 or sheets of bark, never of tiles or shingles. 



A simple building, well proportioned, with a deep shadowing 

 cornice and a roof of not too steep a pitch, is always satisfactory 

 anywhere. If this roof, made with a steeper pitch, is of rush 

 or straw thatch, the charm of the structure is assured regardless. 

 I am tempted to say, of design and proportion. Of course this 

 is not altogether so; but clematis and honeysuckle and akebia 

 will soon hide defects of design, leaving the picturesque roof 

 alone in view. Such a structure takes its place in the midst of 

 greenery as if it, too, had grown from the earth. It suits any 

 kind of house and grovmds, great or small, and is preeminently 

 the sort of thing to use with the free lines of landscape or abso- 

 lutely informal gardening. 



Luxuriant planting should back up any garden house, on one 

 side or another. It may hide it indeed from everywhere, yet 

 leave vistas from it to any charming bits of planting, natural 

 or artificial. Or the structure may be a part of the garden 

 design and as such occupy a position of comparative prominence; 

 but even here it should be planted in and well clothed with ver- 

 dure as well as backed and framed by it. 



